Mindanao
Mindanao can easily be considered the most interesting of the Philippine islands. It is, however, not necessarily the most accommodating.
What makes Mindanao so interesting are social features which are of a variety probably not found elsewhere on the globe on so limited a space. Mindanao is Christian, Muslim and animist; it is modern and Stone Age; it is communist and fascist; it is feudal, bourgeois, and proletarian; it is violent and peaceful; it is colonial and independent; it is realistic and crazy.
Those bored with western civilization can easily be cured in Mindanao. It's a reservation for all with a need to spice up their lives. They will get an impression there of the chaos life originates from, but if they are not careful they could also get a taste of how life ends.
Definitely, Mindanao is a thrill, but definitely, too, Mindanao is also a risk. Probably, one can't take away the risk and keep the thrill.
Both, thrill and risk, come from people rather than nature. It's something like the Wild West. Of course, there are gold mining towns, as for example near Mount Diwata in the province of Davao. And of course, many people are armed, and shoot-outs are common. There are organized bandits and unscrupulous businessmen, and there are crazy preachers and religious fanatics.
However, Mindanao has not only the Wild West ambiance of a pioneers' land but medieval Muslim life as well. There are areas where it is dangerous to be a Christian, and there are areas where even Filipinos, if they are government officials, move around only with a back-up of soldiers. And of course, Muslims when living a traditional way are armed, too.
Wild West and Muslim Middle Ages are by far not enough to make a Mindanao. To complete the adventure that is Mindanao, it also takes a portion of piracy around the shores (for details please see the Sulu chapter), and it takes the many primitive tribes in the jungles of the island; not all of them are necessarily friendly when their living space is intruded upon by foreigners (for details on tribes, please see the chapter People).
And last but not least, there is a political atmosphere created by various revolutionary bands roaming around in The Country side. Many of these revolutionaries are not very strong when it comes to ideology but they are good in solving their practical, especially financial problems.
Mindanao owes its diversity mainly to the lack of ability on the part of the rulers in Manila to implement their order. It has always been like that. The Spanish who arrived as early as 1527 were never able to conquer the whole island. Anyway, they were only in second place among powers coming from the west and trying to export their social, economic and religious systems to east Asia.
About a century before the Spanish, the Arabs arrived in western Mindanao and on the Sulu islands. It was always easier for those coming first to primitive societies to install their religion and social order. Parts of the Philippines, where the Spanish only met animists and chieftain forms of rule were easily conquered and evangelized. But in western Mindanao and the Sulu islands, Islam and a sultanate form of government were already established by Arab powers, and there was a lot of resistance to the Spanish.
Only along the northern coast and in Zamboanga were the Spanish able to establish their colonial order. Zamboanga, particularly, remained for centuries a Spanish enclave in a Muslim surrounding. Probably because the enemy was right at the doorstep, the population of Zamboanga, after being colonized, took on much more of the cultural values and forms of the Spanish than did other parts of The Country . The local non-Muslim dialect Chabacano, for example, contains many more Spanish idioms then any other Philippine dialect.
Continued
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